The Devil and the Road
by KateThorne
Summary: After hearing of John Winchester, minor rock legend's, death Sam returns to his brother and the crew on the road. Ghosts of the past keep rearing their heads and in the center of all his memories of a ruined, disillusioned childhood sit Gabriel, his father's former manager. Sam/ Gabriel. Mentioned Dean/ Castiel. Angst. M for sex, language and violent themes. WARNINGS INSIDE.
1. Chapter 1

_WARNINGS: Rated M for graphic sex in later chapters. Angst. Dark fic. Angry season1/season2 Sam! Age difference. Cross-generational relationship. _

**_Rape/Non-Con in later__ chapters._**

* * *

For the past four years, Sam had been expecting the call.

He had just been expecting the call before TMZ, _People_ magazine, and all of his Twitter followers told him first.

"Gabriel." Sam said as he answered the phone. He still was not sure if he was more furious that Gabriel would have the nerve to call him or that Dean didn't.

"So, I guess you've heard then."

"Yeah. I heard." Sam bit the inside of his cheek. He wasn't going to _cry _in front of Gabriel, not even over the phone. "From the _internet_. Where is Dean?" Sam's resolve cracked, just for a minute, "How is Dean?"

"He's... he's not great, but his friends are here." Sam could hear it, over the line, even if Gabriel didn't say it.

His _friends _are here. Because _you _aren't.

Gabriel didn't need to actually say anything to be a complete dick.

"Well, he'll call me, right?" Sam asked.

"You do know that phones work both ways, don't you?" Gabriel retorted.

"Right, well, thanks for the _condolences _and all, but-"

"I'm not calling about that." Gabriel cut him off, "There are some forms you need to sign, I was telling you that I'm overnighting them. Figured I should call first. Dean wouldn't bring it up."

"Oh." Sam said shortly. Business, of course. "Ok, sure."

"Have a lawyer read them over, first. Otherwise they're pretty standard."

"I _am _a lawyer."

"Oh, that's right."

"Goodbye, Gabriel."

"I am. Sorry. Sam. I would have led with that, but I figured you'd have just hung up on me."

"I would have." Sam said, right as he hung up the phone.

* * *

For as long as he could remember, his Dad had been on the road. Sam's first steps had been at a rest stop, when the tour bus ran out of gas. Sam had learned to read from a private tutor who made a classroom out of the cramped dining table that doubled as a bed in the trailer when they stopped for the night. The first friends that Sam ever had were Dean and the roadies.

Sam's first hand job had been by a groupie who's opening line was just how much he looked like his Dad. John Winchester. Small time rockstar, general drunkenness and world weary eyes to complete the whole picture. Professionally trimmed scruff to really sell it, but even Sam had to admit that John Winchester was _great _at what he did.

He sang heartbreak, wore it right on his sleeve but never once seemed weak with it. He had a strong voice, but not loud, just sure. Sam had many complaints about his father, but the effect of John's voice was undeniable. It didn't warble, or tremble. It was sure of all the sorrow in the world and it was sure of all the pain. And it went on forever, ran in his ears and pumped through his blood like music, long after the song ended. Even to this day, now that Sam was grown and all, utterly over being the prodigal son of the man, he found himself getting his father's songs stuck in his head, late at night or right before a big test.

A reviewer once called John's voice the voice of the man who narrates the world. Sam knew that John bedded her after, hell, maybe even during, the interview. But, that didn't mean she was off the mark.

There was a time of his life, young, formative years when adults seemed infallible. When there was a crucial little part of his brain that was convinced that wisdom and being right was directly proportional to being able to see over things. He would watch his father from the side of the stage, surrounded by crew and usually holding the sleeve of Dean's hoodie, and Sam would marvel at how _brave _his Dad was. On the stage, he looked so impossibly vulnerable, while blinded by the lights on him. Everyone was looking, holding their breath. He looked like a man facing down the enemy, one single person against the eyes of many. And he sang; sure and unwavering. His Dad was the bravest man in the world.

Sam didn't like their Dad after the show, though. He was twitchy and short tempered, always shaking his sons off and disappearing into the night. He never wanted to look at them when he was all keyed up and trembling, almost like he didn't really believe he'd have survived it. Like maybe he really had gone to battle in the crowd and in the music, and now he wasn't sure of what to do with himself in the real world.

So Dean would take him and sheppard him off towards their trailer, try and convince Sam to go to bed. Sometimes they'd stay up and Dean would tell Sam stories about their dad and their mother and girls and towns from when Sam was too young to remember. It wasn't until Sam was older, that he figured Dean was making most of them up.

Every Christmas, they got guitars and the vast majority of the time that Sam could remember his father looking at him, just him and Dean without roadies and managers at his elbows, he was teaching them chords. Dean was better at it, but Dean practiced more. Dean skipped his school lessons and plucked his guitar instead of learning his math. He never read Steinbeck or Dickens, but he did learn how to do a major string change.

When Dean turned fifteen, his Dad let him preform one of his songs before he came on stage, and it was just the shittiest week of Sam's life.

Dean was jittery the whole time, too eager when his father was looking but ghost faced when he wasn't. He was deliberately ignoring Sam, calling him a kid and rolling his eyes at Sam's childish neediness. He went to bed after Sam did and snuck out when Sam wasn't looking and it wasn't fair because Sam didn't have any friends. How could he? He never set foot inside of a school, never talked to anyone his own age besides the occasional kid of a motel owner, running around.

Dean was the one who played Go-Fish with him and Dean was the one who helped him play pranks on the road crew. It wasn't fair that Sam had to be the one alone in the trailer. Dean probably didn't even think about Sam while he was out in bars, drinking and talking to girls. But Sam just sat at home and waited for him to come back. All Sam had was Dean, but now Dean was following Dad onto the battlefield of stage lights and even the crew members couldn't do anything besides talk about how well Dean was coming along and how handsome he looked in his father's coat. It was the one that John wore on the cover of his only album that went platinum.

John was on the cover of it, standing next to Mary Campbell. It was titled "Only Her and the Road." and even Sam was old enough to recognize that Dean was being groomed. Dressed up to remind people of her without him having to say it.

Sam didn't watch Dean's performance because Dean had called him a baby and made him cry that day. It seemed to really matter a lot at the time.

But Sam knew that he sang that song that John wrote for their mother, even before she was in the ground. And Sam didn't know her at all, but he was mad at John for giving that song away, for giving that love away to a bunch of strangers. That was probably when it started to change; that little part of him that used to think his Dad was a hero began to think of him as a coward. He wasn't facing down the enemy, not bravely declaring his love for her to the ears of strangers.

He was looking for her, replaying that memory over and over again turning it into a ghost to haunt him and Dean with. That song that got stuck in his head when he tried to fall asleep. Dean shaking under stage lights, trying to find some phantom image of Mary in the crowd, like John had implicitly promised he would. It never came to anything, besides picking over the scab until it was a scar the size of a canyon between them all.

It had started that night that Dean didn't come home after his show. It festered on all the lonely, inconsistent nights after. He got his own trailer and his own room once he started opening for John on tour and Sam sat in the quiet dark and hated their father more than anything in the world.

Suddenly Dean needed "space" to do grown up things and kid brothers weren't allowed. He needed his own rooms for the girls after the show. He needed his own space for drinks with the road crew. He needed a special bag that Sam wasn't allowed to touch. He'd peeked once, because telling a twelve year old to not touch something was practically asking for it. It was a pipe and rolling papers and sweet, musty smelling weed.

Dean had never left Sam out before, and now he couldn't seem to get a word in edgewise. John took his brother from him, put him in the line of fire and now Sam was all alone with their songs stuck in his head.

Then Sam turned eighteen and all that hatred building inside him for six years had been pressed into something salvageable.

Sam wrote one hell of a personal statement. He dropped his father's name without shame and got into every school he applied to. He sold all the guitars that his father had given him and went to Stanford. And he met a girl who insisted that she hadn't heard a single note of his father's songs and he told himself that he loved her.

And then, ten years later, TMZ called. And _People_ magazine and his Twitter feed blew up with messages of sympathy.

John Winchester was found dead in his motel room in Dallas.

He got calls from complete strangers, reporters, therapists and groupies. Hell, he even got a fucking call from _Gabriel. _

But Dean never called him. And more than the loss of their mother had even registered with him, even more than the loss of their father, Sam felt the loss of his brother like a knife in his heart.

* * *

Jess stood beside Sam as he pulled on his suit. He hadn't worn a suit in a long time, not a real one, anyway. He'd always had one, he hadn't grown or shrunk significantly since Armani sent it to him at nineteen, hoping he'd make it to the Country Music Awards and would wear it.

Sam didn't go. But he kept the suit.

"You look really nice." Jess told him, smoothing the shoulders. "It's a little small. I don't think anyone would notice."

"Thanks, Jess."

Jess stood on her tiptoes and rested her chin over his shoulder, hugging him tightly from behind.

"I love you, Sam. I wish you'd let me go with you."

Sam sighed. Jess had called him the instant that he had hung up with Gabriel, telling him she was coming over, she was going with him to that funeral, she was never going to leave his side. Sam wasn't even sure if he wanted to go to the funeral, Dean's silence was like a slap in the face. There was a terrifying thought that Dean didn't want to see him, that turning up would somehow make this, probably the worst thing in Dean's life, a little harder.

Or, perhaps the worst idea of all, that Dean was waiting for Sam to make the first move, and Sam's silence was the one slapping Dean in the face. So, either Dean didn't want Sam there and staying away was the only kind thing Sam could do. Or, Dean was withering without his brother's support, his brother's fucking _acknowledgement_ and staying away and staying silent was the cruelest thing Sam could do.

He couldn't decide, so Jess did it for him. He was going and she intended to go with him. But that was when Sam remembered who he was, a full grown man, a recently graduated lawyer and not the kid in the trailer that followed his Dad's tour.

Sam was going to get torn apart when he showed his face. Dean might be missing him, but between Bobby and Ellen and definitely Gabriel, he'd be walking into a lion's den. He could handle, he'd spent his life growing a second skin to drunken insults muttered under people's breaths and the snappish tempers of people too long on the road with only each other's company. There might be cameras. There would surely be at least one pushy reporter trying to find a new angle. The patriarch is dead, and his sons, the one who stayed and the one who left standing beside each other. It was a story that would sell, even Sam could admit that.

But he didn't want anyone to sell Jess and somehow, just being in proximity to people who made a living off of someone else's life turned everyone inside out and against each other. It would be hard enough for Sam to be reintroduced to the culture where everything you said could be sold. He didn't think he could walk on eggshells and still look over his shoulder to be sure that Jess was doing the same.

She certainly wasn't happy about his decision. She did, however, offer to lend him one of her suitcases. She did not remember why she previously hadn't let him into her half of their shared closet.

Sam threw the box onto the dining room table where she was studying. She looked at him in shock for a moment before she registered what it was she was looking at, then all the color drained from her pretty pale features as she remembered what had been in the box she had spent so much time ignoring and just how nasty Sam could look when he wanted to.

"You said you didn't know." He said softly as he threw the tee shirt onto the bed.

It was faded from being washed a few million times and a size or two too small to fit Jess now. Creases were pressed into the fabric, from years and years of hiding in that closet, under the suitcases and boxes of knick knacks she had forgotten since they moved in together.

Despite the shirt's age, on the fabric, as legible as it was the day it was pressed said the letters, "Only Her and the Road." And there, in his damn leather jacket, sat John Winchester with one arm around his wife and a guitar in the other.

"Sam," Jess warned, standing up nonetheless. Jess was tall and Jess was tough but Sam was a force to be reckoned with when he wanted to be. "Sam, don't overreact."

"You _lied_" the whispered accusation was met without resistance.

"It's a shirt, Sam. And... c'mon, it's unreasonabe for you to expect that someone would have never heard him! They still play it on the radio! It wasn't _why _I'm with you. It had nothing to do with it! It has nothing to do with you!"

"You _lied." _Sam growled, "If it meant _nothing _why bother? Why spend five years-"

"Sam, I've never brought him up. I never did anything like that!"

"Why did you lie?" Sam asked again.

"Because." Jess took a long breath, crossing her arms over her chest, "I wouldn't be here with you, five years later if I'd said that, yes, I did know who you were. And yes, I knew who he was and once, in nineteen fucking nintey seven my Mom went to his concert and bought me a shirt. You push people away too fast, Sam. Assume that they want you for the worst reason. It _wasn't _like that. _I_ wasn't like that. There's a reason you don't have any friends, Sam. And it isn't him. I'm sorry that he's famous and I'm sorry everyone knows, but... Sam. You're the one who is letting it define you."

"You know how it is?"

"I didn't mean it like that."

"You know how I _feel_?"

"Sam-"

"You have _no idea _what I've seen and done. You never will either. Sorry, Jess. I hope your lie was freaking worth it."

"What's _that _supposed to mean?" Jess retorted, following him as Sam turned and left the room. He was calmer, now. He always had been when he knew what he needed to do. "Sam, stop right there and tell me what you meant. I _love _you and I deserve to know what-"

But Sam had already found his keys and was prying his copy of their front door key from his keyring.

"No. _No. _Sam are you _fucking kidding me_? I deserve more than this. I deserve better than this. I've loved you for five years and you need to sit here and talk about this with me like a goddamn adult."

But Sam was already opening the door.

Loving someone had never stopped Sam from leaving before.

* * *

Sam didn't need to call his brother to know that Dean would still be in Dallas. His brother still wore John's leather coat. He still had the necklace Sam won for him out of a crane machine. He was sentimental. He didn't just up and vanish, run when things got real or painful.

Sam wondered if he got that from their mother.

He sent his text to Gabriel, who had sent a car to the airport, not bothering to come along to meet Sam himself with the driver. Gabriel had always been intuitive like that.

Gabriel hadn't always been his father's –and now, apparently, Dean's- manager, but it certainly felt like it. Whenever John needed to be herded from one plane to the other, Gabriel was there. Whenever John needed to be picked up from a bar, Gabriel was there. Every Christmas that John was preforming, every birthday that John had forgotten, Gabriel was in the background, ushering John from Sam and Dean, leading him toward the stage.

Gabriel's job was making sure that John was where he would make the most money, and Gabriel was very good at his job.

And now Gabriel was still around, so presumably his new job was keeping Dean in the lime light, vulgarly bright now that everyone was talking about the tragic death of John. The only time anyone really talked about the Winchesters was when one of them died.

Dallas. Sam watched the city pass by, rolling pillars of concrete freeways and off ramps. Sam had always liked Texas. It was flat and boring to drive through, so Dean always ended up playing car games with him. Ten hours of marathon 'I Spy' with roadie's tee shirts and food wrappers in the van. But it was quiet as the driver went down the interstate this day, professionally so.

They pulled up to a Hilton just a half hour away from the airport and then Sam saw him, by the entrance of the hotel lobby, with a phone to one ear and a finger plugged into the other as he tried to listen over the noise of cars pulling up to the curb.

"Yeah, yeah. Check your email. I need to go." Gabriel said as Sam came closer. He angled his head to look up at him, taking a deep breath. Sam hadn't gotten any taller, but he had gotten broader. Filled out a bit in the shoulders and people started treating him differently. He didn't know why he had expected Gabriel to look different; he was still only about Sam's mid chest height, with a hair cut that hadn't changed since 1997. He had bright eyes that were easy to miss as his brow was usually scrunched up in frustration or annoyance. He wasn't round, but his face was. He had always had softer features than the rest of them, almost feminine, until he started talking and the words that came out were as salty as a sailor's.

Yellow- brown eyes narrowed up at him as Gabriel pocketed the cell phone.

"You actually came." Gabriel said softly. It sounded weird from him, that note of doubt and... was it pity? Sam had been in the real world, where people loved each other and were nice to each other and gave hugs when someone died, so he had to fight the urge to pat Gabriel's shoulder. Winchesters didn't touch. Only Ellen, and she did it sparingly.

Ellen. Sam missed Ellen.

"Well, ok, then." Gabriel said as Sam looked over his head, as though the thought of Ellen would make her magically appear. "Let's get you inside and settled. No one has caught wind of us in this hotel yet, so no paparazzi as of right now... but it's all over the news. They'll swoop once they find us. Garth will get your bags."

Sam wordlessly followed Gabriel into the hotel lobby. Gabriel didn't seem at all put off by Sam's silence. He was used to being all but ignored.

"Should I take you to Dean's room or wait for you to text him first?" Gabriel asked as they stepped into the elevator.

"Hold off. A bit." Sam said and Gabriel gave a curt nod.

"How was... the flight?" Gabriel asked, that annoying and foreign pitying tone of his. It was his mask, his work mask and Sam didn't have the patience for it. He didn't have the patience for Gabriel's snarky sympathy, underneath every word of it was the accusation.

He wouldn't have had to be on a flight if he hadn't left. He wouldn't need to give Dean this kind of space if he hadn't left. John might have not drunk himself to death in a motel room in Dallas if Sam hadn't left.

Sam was regretting his decision to come here, to leave Jess and her facade of love. Because here there was little faking it. It was too much attention from employees who slowed their work and stared out of the corners of their eyes as he passed. Gabriel and his knowing tone, predicting his every move like they were familiar.

They stepped out of the elevator into the sterile, quiet floor. It had that generic smell of air freshener, that sort of cushioned feel of someplace too clean to be a real home. Gabriel guided him to the left, pointing with his chin to where the hall forked and turned right.

"Dean's room is 658. Be sure to knock. Don't sneak up on him." He handed over the card key.

Sam took it and opened the door.

Gabriel stood dumbly as Sam stepped inside and dropped his coat on the bed. Sam stared at him, willing him to just _go away._

"Sam... ah... we all missed you." Gabriel started. This was new. Gabriel always knew what he was going to say, even if no one wanted to hear it. "We are... here... for you. You know. I'm sorry. About John. You'll text me if you need... anything."

We missed you when you abandoned him. We're here for you, even when you weren't there for him.

Fucking Gabriel.

"Bye, Gabriel." Sam said flatly, and shut the heavy door in his face.

Sam hated hotels. The silence was the symphony of his childhood.

And, not for the first time, but certainly the most gut wrenching, Sam wished he had a different life.

He wanted a house, full of his father's things, that smelled like him to wrap himself in.

Because he did love his father. He loved the way it felt when John had picked him up when he was smaller. Artful scruff rubbing against his face when John was in a playful mood. He liked the way John sounded when he first woke up in the morning, a slow, lazy growl, like a bear prodded out of hibernation.

Sam would never smell his Dad's aftershave or hear his father laugh. All that was left was a legend of a man with a guitar on a stage, singing about love that was dead and gone.

And one day Sam would forget how he fit in John's strong arms. He'd forget the stubble hidden dimple on his cheek. He'd forget his father, hell, he'd been _trying _to forget his father since he was eighteen. But now Sam wanted a home to remember him in, not a series of generic hotel rooms and concert posters.

John Winchester was dead and gone and Sam didn't have anything more of him than some fan with a CD.

It was all too clean.

Sam pulled a pillow over his face and cried for the first time since he left.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam didn't have to worry about texting Dean, because Dean found him first. While Sam's instinct was to hold back and wait, Dean's was to come racing forward, always willing to break the ice and make the first move. It was probably why people liked Dean more.

Sam must have dozed off because it was dark outside when he heard a knocking- ok, pounding- at his hotel door. Gabriel was more like a cancer, silent and invasive. Without John, now Dean was the only one who thundered.

"You fucking, son of a bitch." Dean hissed as Sam opened the door. His brother was mad. It didn't take a genius to figure it out.

So Sam fell back into his oldest, tried and true method of self defense against his big brother; he threw his arms around him and held tight. Instinctively, Dean's hands wrapped around his shoulders and Sam was bigger now, so the dynamics were different, but it was the same as it had always been. Sam apologizing without having to do something embarrassing, like say it out loud and Dean forgiving him without a minute's hesitation.

Dean grabbed a fistful of Sam's shirt, pulling him closer but not admitting it out loud.

"Son of a _bitch_" Dean repeated weakly and Sam released a snotty chuckle.

"Dean-" Sam started, and Dean just nodded. "I'm-"

"I know. Me too." Dean said gruffly.

And they were done talking about it.

Unfortunately, that meant they were done talking. They both stared at each other for a moment, neither wanting to look away because for all the things that Sam had hated about life on the road, Dean had never, not even for a second, been a part of that. Even when Dean was mad at him, avoiding him, calling him pipsqueak and bitch, Dean was Dean and Sam could never regret a minute with him.

"Drinks?" Sam offered.

"Yeah." There was another beat of silence. "Wanna go out somewhere?" Dean offered.

Sam looked around his hotel room. Suffocating silence. Eight years of explaining where they'd been, what they'd done and who they were now sat humid in the air. It was a conversation that needed to happen.

Later.

"Definitely." Sam said, reaching behind him and grabbing his coat.

* * *

"Gabriel told me that this would be a decent place." Dean said, stepping into the old tavern.

The bright side of leaving the hotel meant escaping the silence, the weird limbo of grieving and feeling lost and numb. A bar meant alcohol, and Sam could really, really use a drink, and Dean was always looser with girls to leer at.

However, being people who were on the news at the moment, meant that they had slim pickings. Dallas was a big city, so it was safe to assume that everyone had heard. Celebrity deaths do that. They had needed to find a bar that was dark and empty, maybe a little dirty. The sort of place where no one paid attention.

Dean had never really been poor in his entire life. Their father was a one hit wonder, but he always had a gig. There was no mansion, but there was always money for beer and a decent bed. That being said, Dean and John had always been drawn to the sort of dark, dirty bars like this one. Sam had always chalked it up to them not wanting to be recognized, but now he saw some of the charm in it; it was the one place in their life that wasn't trying to be anything else.

They tucked themselves into a booth when they walked in. It was a Monday. Notoriously slow.

A woman in her forties came to their table and deposited two cloudy glasses of water before fishing her notepad out of her apron. A second glance at Dean was the only indication that she recognized him. She brushed past it and took their drink orders.

Dean took a drink of his water. Sam started tearing the corner of the napkin.

"How long you planning on staying?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. "I'm done with school and done with... everything that was there."

"For real?" Dean asked, doubtful, wanting to ask more but not knowing how, "You always got a place with us, Sam." Dean offered. That particular offer had never been off the table, no matter how hard Sam tried.

"Yeah?" Sam laughed, a hollow thing. Even after all these years he didn't know the appropriate emotional reaction. Dean used to tease him about being a girl, in touch with his feelings but that wasn't true. Dean was the one who made love and loyalty and apologizing easy. Dean was the one that had never let pride get in the way. Sam was just sulky and glum as a teenager and so he was credited with a more complex emotional range than Dean was. "Where are you going? We don't even have a home."

"Gabriel thinks I should lay low for a while. Start touring in about eight months or so. He got me a gig opening for Gordon Walker before Dad passed. It was a solo job. Can you imagine? _Gordon Walker_."

"Wait, touring?"

"Well, yeah, Sam. What'd you think?"

"I mean, Dad _just _died." Sam said and Dean winced, but he had to know that Sam would be the one to say it out loud. The first one to say it out loud since he arrived in Dallas. Grief was a funny thing in the fact that absolutely no one seemed to know what to do or how to act. It was almost funny, except it wasn't. "Do you really think he'd want you to be singing, still. And he was going to let you open for Gordon Walker alone?"

"I'm thirty-two, man." Dean said, rubbing his bicep as the waitress brought their whiskeys. Neither was going to bother fooling around with beer. Not tonight. "Couldn't open for the old man my whole life."

"But, did you ever even really want to do it? I mean, we have money now. We can retire. You don't have to be his-"

"His _what?" _

"You don't have to anymore. That's all."

"What, you think I've spent my whole life just following him around like a puppy because it never occurred to me not to? Fuck you, Sam. I am a person, with an ability to decide what I want."

"What chance did we have, really? I mean, growing up on the road, with all these people who looked and felt like family but got a check at the end of the week. That wasn't a family, Dean. And it wasn't our home. We never knew any different."

"Don't you go lumping me in there with you." Dean said. He finished his whiskey and waved for another one. "You don't get to say how happy I was or wasn't."

"Yeah, singing his song over and over again for state fairs and dive bars. Sounds like your dream, Dean." Sam muttered.

"I wanted my family, Sam. That's what I wanted. And I was happy because I had you guys and I thought we had a good thing going. It didn't look like everyone else's but... but _I _was happy." Dean broke off as the waitress came back once again to refill Sam's drink. "Leave the bottle," Dean said, handing her a folded hundred.

"Well. Well I was lonely, Dean."

"How could you have been lonely? Your family was there the whole time. Wasn't that enough?"

Sam was quiet as Dean topped off his whiskey and then refilled his own glass.

"I guess not." Dean said curtly, and took a long drink, his eyes roaming the bar, a whole room that didn't have to listen to this conversation. A whole room that didn't have to listen to Sam Winchester complain about things he couldn't change. Dean never bothered, never complained and was, all around, a more likable son than Sam had ever been.

Sam forgot how that felt to see it. Dean's hair getting ruffled by the sound guy after his set. John looping his arm around his eldest when Dean nailed the F chord. People just _loved _Dean and he loved them back without it even occurring to him that sometimes it might be hard.

Sam had forgotten how lonely that felt, watching the whole world assert that Dean was more welcome than he was.

Just like after he left Jess' place, just like after he boarded the plane, just like after Gabriel left him in that hotel room all silent and clean, Sam wondered why he even bothered to show up at all.

Sam and Dean drank in silence a little longer. Sam was getting tipsy and Dean broke the ice by blowing a straw wrapper at him.

Dean smiled, then Sam smiled and he couldn't help it. So he started talking, that had always been his problem with drinking. He just started talking about every little thought in his head, every thing he ever saw. So, after six drinks, Sam was running his mouth and Dean had always seemed to like listening to him like this. Dean always knew how to make someone feel good if he wanted to. Sam never learned to do that.

"So, yeah, I just left. She had this... this box of Dad's stuff, like, a shrine or something to him." Sam finished telling his brother.

"Fucking psycho." Dean agreed, pouring out the last of the whiskey bottle into his glass.

"Yeah, we'd been together for... for... like three years. I _lived _there and she had all that stuff in, like, our closet." Sam shook his head, shook Jess face from his memory. She had seemed genuinely hurt, but she must have been a good actress, to have used him the whole time. "I mean, like, three years."

"Fucking. Psycho." Dean repeated. He glanced down at his phone. It was a very Gabriel thing to do.

"Jesus, you look just like him." Sam said, out loud, apparently, since Dean looked up and grinned.

"Like... Dad?"

"No. Well, yeah, a little. You always looked like Mom and you know it. No, you look just like fucking _Gabriel_ with your smart phone or whatever. Like, who is he always texting? He only knows _us."_

Dean rolled his eyes, an old, placating smile on his face.

"God, with this again?"

"With what again?"

"Nothing." Dean said, still grinning as he threw back the very last of his drink. Sam was feeling kind of warm and restless all over. Drinking never made him sleepy, it always made him want to burn the world to ground for something to do. Jess never liked it when he drank.

Maybe he should buy the next bottle.

Dean was still smiling like a teenage girl with a secret so Sam kicked him under the table.

"With what again?"

"Just you and _Gabriel. _All you ever did as a kid was talk about Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel. So fucking _boring, _dude."

"Ok, I was _complaining _about Gabriel because he was a total bag of dicks."

"Yeah, sometimes, but you had a weird thing with Gabriel long before that." Dean creased his brow as he remembered, "Yeah, when you were a kid or whatever, he took you to get McDonalds or something while Dad had an interview and I think it was the first time we ate there and it wasn't a drive through. He must have let you play in the ball pit or whatever because after that you wanted to follow Gabriel around _everywhere._And if Gabriel wasn't around, you wanted to know where he was and if he was around you wanted him to play with you. And when we were alone you always wanted to know if I knew what his favorite color was or what his favorite food was or when his birthday was. Dad was so relieved when that phase passed."

"I never did any of that." Sam snapped, his ears getting hot. But it sounded vaguely familiar, like someone else's story he'd heard too many times. "You're making shit up to embarrass me."

"I promise, I'm not. That embarrassed _me. _And poor Gabriel, of course. He was like, twenty five and had no idea what to do with your attention. I think he just pretended the whole thing wasn't happening."

"Stop being an asshole." Sam murmured.

"Hey, dude, it's whatever," Dean said, finally easing up, "It was a long ass time ago. You've done way more embarrassing shit between now and then. Everyone forgot, 'cept me. I'm a big brother, I'm supposed to remember stupid stuff you did when you didn't know better and rub in your face at the most inappropriate time."

"Thanks, Dean." Sam said softly. "You _killed _this bottle, I'm getting another. More of the same?"

"Uh, not for me, no." Dean said. He looked annoyingly sober, "I'm switching to beer."

"Really?"

"Don't want to be drunk tonight." Dean said with a shrug like that was it, but it wasn't enough, that was for certain. There were a million more things to say about that. Winchesters didn't open a bottle of anything unless it was to get drunk. It was just what they did. Dean had never decided to not get drunk before.

Sam shrugged and went to the bar, only wobbling a little bit.

When Sam got back to the table, Dean wasn't alone. There was a good looking guy, pretty, even. Kind of pale and delicate with a shock of dark hair and intense blue eyes. He was like Dean's opposite, but in a nice way.

"Hey." Sam said as he looked the newcomer over. Dean was looking at the guy too much, like he wasn't a stranger.

"Hey." Dean said, "This is Castiel- Cas. He works for us, he's my wardrobe guy."

Cas gave a serious nod.

"Hey." Sam said again, trying to place why some random guy got to be a part of their night. Dean scooted over, letting Castiel sit in the booth beside him and left his arm on the seat rest, not touching, but creating a sort of cocoon of presence behind Cas' head. Cas didn't seem to notice the natural gesture. Sam squinted between the two of them before offering to get Cas something.

"Cas doesn't drink," Dean explained, "Dry and sober since the day I met him. Brought him here to try and be a good influence on us."

"Dean said you might need a Designated Driver." Cas explained, "But thank you."

Sam laughed at that.

"Dean drives better when he's been drinking," Sam said, nudging his brother with his toe, "So worried about getting pulled over he actually focuses on the road instead of the radio. Or the girls in the next car. Or how his hair looks."

It was very funny. Sam didn't understand why Dean was getting all uncomfortable looking.

Cas squeezed Dean's knee under the table and Sam realized, like a punch to the gut, what was going on. Jess used to do that to him when he was talking too loudly or he drank too much.

"A lot has changed in Dean's life since you've been gone." Cas said, almost sternly.

"Yeah." Sam said, nodding, "Yeah, ok, sure." He raised his eyebrows at his brother who shrugged.

"So, Cas, always been interested in... wardrobe, was it?" Sam tried.

"Not particularly."

"Just a fan of the music, then?"

"Not really."

"Cas needed a job and he has a cousin on the crew so that was that. He's been with us for about... three years, was it, Cas?" Dean supplied since it didn't seem like Cas was going to. Sam couldn't tell if Cas was just a man of few words or completely unimpressed with Sam in general. He wouldn't be the first.

"Something like that, yes." Cas said.

"Cas has been helping out, a lot, since... since. Yeah."

"Yeah." Sam echoed.

Castiel looked at him for a beat, his eyes giving nothing away but taking in everything about him. Castiel must have heard about Sam, from Dean, from the other crew, god forbid from his father. Castiel had probably heard every terrible thing about him, saw them more clearly now since he hadn't watched Sam grow like the rest of them.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, being seen like this. Dean cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry for your loss. Your father was a fair man."

"If you say so." Sam said quietly into his drink.

"He was, though." Dean said in a tone that wasn't to be questioned. Complete faith. John had taught him well, except Dean never did manage to learn when to drop the act.

Because that's what it all was; just some elaborate act. Something to make an audience feel something. The man devastated by his dead wife, chasing her song around the country and only coming alive on stage for strangers, teaching his sons to do the same.

Like they would ever find Mary like that. Sam was the only one who seemed to realize that the harder they chased the memory of Mary, that song John wrote for her that spoke of all the regret and loss in their perfect marriage, the more it slipped away from them.

They were chasing her reflection in a mirage, jumping ahead of them, always ahead of them on the endless blacktop.

Sam raised his eyebrows but Dean was getting belligerent now.

"Like father like son." Sam said wryly. "Dad spent most of his life, all of our lives, trying to impress a dead person. And what are you doing? Picking up where he left off? It was getting more and more desperate the past ten years with just him and that same damn song. With you, it's pathetic. Mom's dead, Dean, and now Dad is too and you're just running in circles, don't even know how stupid it all looks. You think she would have wanted this for you? You think he'd want you back on the road less than a year after he died?"

"You got no right saying stuff like that." Dean growled. "You got no right talking about them like that."

"They were my parents too, Dean. They were my _only_ parents too and now they're dead." Sam shook his head, his glass was empty and he wanted another. Having something in his hand helped him collect his thoughts. "Never gave us nothin' Dean. Just took, took, took our whole lives and you're too loyal to even know you got swindled out of a whole life."

Sam stood and headed to the bar, swaying a little but acting like he didn't notice. He got three steps when he felt his brother's hand on his shoulder.

"You're such a fucking bitch, Sam." Dean hissed. "Fucking... this is why I didn't bother calling you. What are you even doing here? Gabriel offer you money? That it? Want to sell Dad's stuff at some auction and live your life pretending it all never happened?"

"Fuck off, Dean." Sam said, the alcohol making his voice slur and wobble against his will. He wanted to wrap Dean up in a hug, grab him around the waist and let Dean tuck his arm over his head. Like they used to. Before Dean grew up and left Sam all alone, just like the rest of them. Before Dean became their Dad and took his side. Sam wanted to be seven again, when Dean seemed so big and smart. Sam wanted it to be like it was before this crater between them opened up.

Instead, Sam threw a punch.

"Fucking-" Dean reeled and the whole empty bar fell even more silent, some Garth Brooks song went on about friends in low places, loud and poignant sounding with the silence and shock ringing in the air. Dean cradled his jaw, Cas came over from the bar, shouldering past Sam and reaching out.

Dean threw out his arm, moving Cas from between him and his brother.

"How long you been wantin' to do that, huh?" he asked. "Shoulda guessed." Dean drawled, his slow, Texas adopted accent coming out when he was trying to sound sure of himself. But Sam knew what Dean looked like when he lied. Sam knew Dean only lied when he was hurt.

Dean swung and hit Sam square on the shoulder, throwing his arm and making him stumble. He didn't land on the bar itself, but it was a close call.

"I'm callin' cops." the bartender said suddenly, reaching the phone behind the counter.

"No, we got it." Castiel said, taking Dean by the arm and pulling him towards the exit.

"Don't leave this one." She called again, and Sam got up to follow them out of the bar. Properly chastised, but Dean was always the one who never knew when to call it quits.

"What are you even doing here, Sam?" He called over Castiel's shoulder he was half carried to the door. Dean was staring at him, so much hurt in those eyes. There was so much innocence that Dean had, by some miracle, maintained in all this.

Dean screwed more women and did more drugs than Sam would ever comprehend, but Dean had never known the beast in Sam's gut. It was an ugly thing, always waiting in the shadows, dying to roar out and ruin anyone too close. Dean had probably never truly hated a single soul his whole life. Sam knew hatred as his oldest, truest friend.

Dean's eyes were watering, his jaw was turning pink and the question still hung in the air, like it had for Sam's whole life; behind the sets, in the car beside his brother as their father beamed proudly at his oldest. What was he even doing here? He didn't fit, and it seemed a cruel trick for life to play, just throwing him in with John and Dean like they could all belong together.

What he even doing here? Sam still didn't have an answer.

* * *

Sam bristled as he watched Castiel make a phone call beside the Winchester's iconic Impala. In the passenger seat, and looking very uncomfortable to be there, sat Dean. His brother stared purposefully out the front windshield, ignoring Sam and deliberately not touching the spot on his face that Sam had hit. Sam's shoulder was throbbing, so Dean had to be hurting even more. Sam had always hit harder.

Castiel walked over, slipping his phone into his pocket and locking Sam with an icy stare. An odd pick, for his brother; a man and a serious one at that. Maybe Dean really had changed.

"Gabriel is on his way." he said curtly. Sam groaned. Castiel didn't roll his eyes but his expression didn't seem likely to lend sympathy, "I'll wait until he gets here and then I'm taking Dean to his room."

"Stellar." Sam said under his breath.

"Indeed." Castiel said, "He'll have a bruise. At the funeral, where there will be photographers and people watching, whispering, talking about him... he'll have a bruise."

"Thought you were a make-up guy. Cover it up."

"I'm wardrobe, and I shouldn't have to." Castiel said cooly. Sam was facing out toward the parking lot, toward the road where Gabriel's crummy station wagon would come rattling down to collect him.

"You're right." Sam sighed. "I know you're right. I'm sorry."

"I am not the one who needs to hear that."

"Well, have you ever tried apologizing to Dean? He hates it. Wants to pretend it never happened. Best way to apologize, our Dad used to say, was to just not fucking do it again."

"Then don't fucking do it again." Castiel said calmly.

"I won't... I didn't mean for it to get that far, I didn't mean to hit him."

"I wasn't just talking about the assault."

Headlights splashed over them, a creaking door opened and closed and Gabriel stood at the driver's side of the car with his arms crossed over the roof. Sam felt like a petulant teenager, or perhaps remembered what a petulant teenager he had once been, as he stood and headed to the car.

"Thanks, Cas." Sam said, turning to the wardrobe guy, "For... you know."

Castiel didn't even acknowledge hearing him, just turned and headed to the Impala and Dean.

* * *

Sam and Gabriel drove in silence. Rudely, Gabriel didn't even acknowledge that Sam was sulking.

"I don't want to talk about it." Sam mumbled finally, as they stopped at the world's longest red light in history, stewing in their own venomous thoughts.

"Fine." Gabriel said simply.

"But Dean started it."

"Fine."

That wasn't the answer Sam wanted, wasn't the way he wanted it to go down. Fighting with Dean left him raw, open and broken and feeling inadequate as always. But Gabriel? Fighting with Gabriel was easier than breathing.

"You didn't have anything better to do tonight? Come pick up my drunk ass?"

Gabriel took a breath through his teeth and rolled his neck, his fingers flexing on the steering wheel. Like Sam's question was _such_ an imposition.

"What?" Sam needled, "You got something to say? You always got something to say. That's why no one likes you. Ever notice how people stop talking when you walk into a room? Hey. Hey, Gabriel. Ever wonder why?"

"Jesus, you're chatty like this, aren't you? Not an improvement."

"Fuck you, Gabriel."

"Fine, Sammy. Whatever."

"Don't call me that. 'm not a kid. They all used to call me that and no one ever took me seriously. That's not.. that's not for you to use. That's not who I am anymore."

"Ok." Gabriel said gently, "I'm sorry. It just slipped out. I'll be more careful, ok?"

Sam crossed his arms over his chest but nodded, stretching his legs out until they hit the corner of the floor and the wall. No leg space whatsoever. Sam grunted.

"After all these years you couldn't buy yourself a new car?" Sam asked, looking to the bald spot on the floor of the driver's side, the cracked cup holders, the busted radio.

"Not really a priority of mine."

"But, I mean, you've worked with Dad forever. Since he started out, got that big single and everything. He went platinum and you were his manager. What have you been spending all your money on all these years if it wasn't new clothes, haircuts or cars? You don't have a house. Never saw you with any girl. No wife, no kids. What do you even have?"

Gabriel gave a dry laugh.

"How much money did you think that your Dad was making? He had one single that was mentionable, at most, twenty seven years ago. It was enough to keep us fed and keep us moving. But, there wasn't much more."

"And now? That your cash cow is dead?"

"Sam." Gabriel warned. "Do not make the mistake of thinking that you and Dean are the only ones grieving."

"Murderers usually feel bad for their victims, then?"

"Shut the fuck up, Sam." Gabriel's brow furrowed, narrowing his almost pretty eyes into ugly little points and it was satisfying to watch. Sam had never done narcotics, but he figured that watching Gabriel like this, his spine curling and tensing, his eyes small and cruel... it must have been what addicts felt with a needle in their arm.

"No. Fucking, no. Why is everyone acting like they can't _see _had been happening the whole time? He needed help. He needed... he needed to not be doing this, not on the road, out in the open, without a home, fucking _wallowing_. And it was you guys. _You_, Gabriel that made him like that. You profited off his misery. Why is everyone pretending that this just _happened?" _

"He was a fully grown man who was able to make his own-"

"He was broken and crippled and you pretended to be his crutch and his friends and his family. And... you you let him drag me and Dean along with him."

"You know, Dean isn't complaining. Somehow it has _always _been you that's been so hard to please."

"Dean is brainwashed. Like some plant you put in a dark corner so it grows all weak and distorted, angling toward any light in it can find. Offer Dean an ounce of affection and he'll cut off his hand if you ask him."

"Dean is happy. But you wouldn't even know what that's like."

"So, are you worried? About Dean and _Castiel?" _

_ "_What about Dean and Cas?"

"C'mon. You know what. The way they look at each other, and the way they touch. Your shining star is super gay. How are you going to sell this one? To your country music, gun toting, bible-belt clinging fan base? You used to unbutton his shirt that third button and make him look like a woman's wet dream. What are you going to do now?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. It never _mattered_. Just because women _wanted _to have sex with him didn't mean that they got to. It's just a character he plays."

"So you don't care if he and Cas go get gay married in Canada and adopt a million babies?"

"No. Do you?"

"No." Sam said quickly, "Because I went to college and I'm an educated, sympathetic person unlike your redneck throwback John followers. What will they say?"

"They don't have to know about Dean's private life. It doesn't have to be like that."

"It will be, though. I can't believe you don't _care_."

"Well," Gabriel tilted his head a bit towards Sam, and softly said, "I'm gay too. So maybe I'm not the person to ask that sort of thing to."

Sam's mouth snapped closed as he looked at Gabriel out of the corner of his eye.

"You're not...gay"

"I assure you, I am."

"I've never seen you with... you haven't dated anyone. I've never seen you with a guy and-"

"I didn't say I was _good _at being gay."

"Gabriel-"

"It really doesn't matter but I give fewer fucks about who Dean goes to bed with every night than anyone else on the whole crew." Gabriel shrugged, "He was lonely for a while, after you left. He is really happy, now."

They pulled up to the hotel, and Gabriel drove into the underground parking garage, his car echoing along the concrete. Sam didn't know what to say, the rug had been pulled out from under him with Gabriel's confession and it didn't seem fair that no one had told him.

Gabriel was gay.

Gabriel had been gay since Sam could remember, the memories seemed different, now. It was the same flashes of vivid memory through the swirl of childhood blur, nothing particularly interesting or damning. Gabriel's eyes closed under his sunglasses as he catnapped in the parking lot before a show. Gabriel holding two shirts up to a teenage Dean's chest, trying to decide which looked more convincing. Gabriel's eyes passing right over Sam's head as he walked into a motel room, looking for John or Dean or anyone else.

And Gabriel had been gay the whole time. It didn't seem like it should matter, but it did.

Sam was thinking too hard, the heavy weight of the gin and whiskey making his thoughts throb in his head, made him feel their melancholy weight to the pit of his gut.

"Sam, what's it matter to you who Dean sleeps with?"

"Doesn't." Sam said, furrowing his brow, "'m happy for him. But-"

"Oh." Gabriel said softly, he was guessing the correct answer by the tone of his voice. "Sam, does it matter to you who _I'm _sleeping with?"

"No." Sam lied, "I just didn't know."

"Not many people do. Dean and Cas, obviously, but the rest of the crew... I think they've guessed."

"I mean, you lied to us." Sam said slowly, his brain moving even slower than the words out of his mouth. He didn't know what he was saying or thinking or even what he wanted but it was just so fucking unfair.

Gabriel, with _secrets_ when Sam didn't even have a minute of privacy. Gabriel had watched every tantrum, every awkward phase, every moment of Sam's excruciating life somehow ignored and displayed at the same time. And Gabriel had lived Sam's whole life with this, this whole identity that he got to keep all to himself.

Sam knew it didn't matter, shouldn't matter but Gabriel was sitting next to him, breathing too loud in the crappy car. Existing and living and being a whole, complex person so obtrusively in Sam's space. All Sam had now, here in Texas with this small man in the small car, was his hurt. It wasn't fair that he was drunk and he felt naked and Gabriel got to be the one, always the one, in control.

Sam had never had control before Stanford. Of course it would be Gabriel that reminded him.

"I hardly lied to you. It wasn't any of your business where I put my junk. You were a kid and you weren't even my kid."

Sam forced himself to laugh around the tacky lump in his gullet. The alcohol made his throat dry, his clammy hands wiped along the thin felt seats.

"You didn't put your junk anywhere, Gabriel. When would you have found the time to get laid, between being in the closet and being on the road?"

"That's not inaccurate," Gabriel allowed. "I did find comfort, here and there, but it was few and far between."

There was something in that voice, a note of familiarity that made Sam's stomach pull tight and sharp. Like yearning, like bitterness. Like Gabriel had watched people be happy and felt none of it for himself.

It sounded like loneliness. It sounded like Sam's whole life but it couldn't have been because Gabriel was the one who took John away and made Dean someone else. Gabriel was the one who kept them on the road.

Gabriel was the one who ruined his life, and he was just rubbing salt into the would, making Sam feel these things all over again.

They were parked in the garage, sitting there, neither looking at the other and neither moving to get out of the car. Sam hated the sound of Gabriel breathing, hated the molecules of heat off his body, hated everything from the pitch of Gabriel's voice to hangnails on his fingers.

But it was too quiet and too cold in that hotel room. Too much of a reminder of how things used to be and how they would never be again. Sam wanted to burn it all to the ground, just to get the restless feeling from his hands and the whirlwind of thoughts from his head.

"Is it any better now?" Sam asked, and Gabriel shrugged. "Think you'll get laid more that he's dead? Maybe Dean will have some cult gay groupies you can prey on?"

"I can't, "Gabriel swallowed heavily, "I can't think about that..."

Sam didn't want to think about it either, so he turned his body to Gabriel's, angling himself in the car and getting only a weird look from Gabriel before he was reaching through the space between them, putting his hand in Gabriel's lap. There were no teasing strokes, no easing into it.

Just a blunt weight of his hand, feeling Gabriel's body like it was real, like it was human and Gabriel could feel him at all. Gabriel hissed through his teeth, more shock than anything else.

But there wasn't any protest and no one pushed him away.

It wasn't much of anything, Sam realized after the surprise of seeing his hand there faded a bit. It was just, denim pants, warmer than Sam expected. And Sam realized, numbly, that he had been expecting it. It was a dark, humiliating thought from his dark and humiliating adolescence, one that had been repressed a thousand times over; the tapes in his head rerecorded with thoughts of women and warm wet fold to lose himself in. There were too many thoughts coming forward tonight, Sam was defenseless when that one slipped through, passing right through his mind and heading straight to his hand.

It wasn't the first time he'd thought about it, only the first time he'd actually made the connection. Gabriel's eyes flicked closed as he rolled his head back.

After a moment, or perhaps infinity in that parking garage that was too bright and harsh to be romantic or anything besides what it was, whatever it was, Gabriel's hips pulsed beneath his grip. Gabriel's flaccid cock began getting firm, and Sam almost laughed at the idea of Gabriel having a cock that could even get hard and hiding it away for all these years. Except Sam didn't laugh. He stared at his hand and what it was doing. It seemed to have a game plan if Sam's head was only trying to keep up.

And when Sam's hand massaged the member, the growing silhouette in the denim shadows, Gabriel finally asked, "What are you doing?" but in a whisper, like maybe he didn't want Sam to stop.

"Have you seen me?" Sam murmured, but he squeezed the cock- _Gabriel's_ cock again- "You're gay and I'm beautiful, don't you want me to do this?"

"-Why are you-?"

Sam's fingers found the metal zipper, pulled it down like Sam had been planning to do it his whole life. Gabriel wasn't wearing underwear, and Sam thought for a moment that Gabriel must have slept in the nude. He'd gotten the call and gotten out of bed, only bothering to throw on pants and had his bare dick rolling around in his pants, pressing against naked thigh and fabric.

It seemed weird to think that Gabriel had a cock at all, but it was in Sam's fist now, almost fully hard and bursting through the split in his jeans like it had been waiting Sam's whole life to break free.

That was a weird thing to think, but Sam had a distinct deja vu feeling about it.

He slid his hand up and down Gabriel's shaft, feeling the hot skin roll under his fingertips and milking pungent pre-come from the slit at the tip. It smelled like man and sex in the station wagon, caged in the car with them taking up the excess room left by the silence.

"Sam," Gabriel sighed, like they were lovers.

There was promise in that voice, a confused, happy promise to give Sam anything in return. Sam's cock twitched, grew content and chubby, taking interest and sniffing around.

There was sex in Gabriel's voice, like Sam had never heard before, like maybe Sam had never known Gabriel before.

Sam jerked his hand back, excruciatingly sober all the sudden. Gabriel didn't say anything, just watched as Sam stared, horrified at what he'd done. Sam got out of the car, running to the solitary hell of his hotel room, running away from this night, this week that wouldn't seem to end.

He glanced back over his shoulder, to Gabriel in the car. Gabriel just sat, his head back against the car seat, his pants still open around his still-hard cock, un-moving.

Watching Sam leave him there without an ounce of surprise.


	3. Chapter 3

**Warnings for rape/ non-con in later chapter. Angry, power hungry, dark!Sam. Homophobic language.**

_"Hey."_ said a voice, something kind of distant yet familiar. there was a rapping sound, a thunking of something against the walls of Sam's head. His brain pulsed two heavy, painful beats in response to the intrusion.

Sam rolled over, away from the noise. In his space, taking his time, rude. He blinked up at the TV he had left on and processed the images of a blender, slicing up ice and frozen blueberries with ease. t could all be Sam's if he called, but only for a limited time.

There was a knock on the door, again. Sam unhappily remembered that was what had woken him.

"_Hey, Sam._" Gabriel's voice. It was gentle and invasive, getting under his skin like a cancer.

And the first image in his mind was Gabriel's head thrown back, his face squeezed tight like it hurt and it felt so good and the way his sex smelled in the tiny car. Fucking shit to Hell.

"_Sam? Sam, you need to get up. You left your phone at the bar, you weren't answering_."

"Ok. Ok, one minute." Sam hoarsely called through the wall All that whiskey had rubbed his throat raw. Whiskey and fighting and fucking, the Winchester way.

"_Hey, can I come in?_"

"Uh..."

_"Just for a minute, people can hear me yelling through your door."_

"Um."

"_One minute?_" Gabriel pleaded again.

"Yeah, yeah, ok." Sam got up and that was when all the rocks in his head came crashing forward to the front of his brain, making him see white spots for a moment. A hangover. Perfect.

Still clutching his forehead, he opened the door to let Gabriel in and the manager passed him, closing the door behind himself. Sam dropped back down on the bed, closing his eyes against the cruel light screaming through the bottoms of the window curtains.

Gabriel handed him a bottle of water which Sam promptly held against his throbbing forehead.

"So..." Gabriel started, grabbing the desk chair from the corner of the room and dragging it so he was sitting across from Sam.

Sam took a deep breath. He didn't want to talk about it, or maybe he did. He wanted to pretend it never happened, or maybe he wanted to do it again. It was... it was Gabriel. _Gabriel_. How the fuck was Sam even supposed to know what he wanted when Gabriel was the way he was? Bossy, pushy, heartless. All the things that had made Sam suffer and still, Sam wanted to be next to him, make him feel things and do things.

"So, they're releasing the body today." Gabriel said, "We need to decide what we're going to do with it... John didn't leave a plan of action and Dean... well, I don't think Dean knows what he wants. John was raised catholic. He has that tattoo on his arm and all, fans might wonder... if we didn't give him a catholic funeral. But then comes the question of where we should bury him."

"Why... why are you asking me these things?" Sam asked, his voice breaking. He had forgotten, for a moment. It was a little, tiny moment where he wasn't cold and numb. A little moment where he was allowed be worried about a drunken half of a hand-job. A moment where it was like that even fucking mattered.

"Because, Sam." Gabriel said, "Dean is having a hard time with it and that's why you came out here, right? To help settle things?"

"Maybe. Yeah." Sam rumpled his hair, leaned forward and focused on what Gabriel was saying. He could do this, he was an adult, he just always seemed to forget when Gabriel was around. "Um, so go back to the funeral thing. Dean and I weren't raised like that, I don't know anything about it."

"Ok, well," Gabriel took a deep breath, "It's pretty basic. There's a wake that we might want to open to his fans. No media or anything, but something where people could gather and remember him. I got a call from a few of his colleagues who want to send things. Gordon Walker wants to send something. So does Steve Wandell. Then there would be a mass which we wouldn't have to leave open to the public. Then the burial."

Gabriel gave a shrug and leaned back, pinching his nose.

"It would be expected. I'll give you time to think about it, but we're meeting the mortician in a bit. We could bury him here, or send him someplace. He's from Kansas, that'd be appropriate."

Sam buried his head in his hands, wishing he wasn't hungover for this.

John being buried, it seemed almost sacrilegious. Sam had only known the man on the road and in the wind, it seemed wrong to think of burying him in some cemetery of some city he just meant to pass through.

"Sam?" Gabriel asked. When Sam looked up, he saw that Gabriel's eyes were small and watery and pink around the ridges. The sacks beneath the eyelids were like purple-red gouges in his face, dark and unnatural because Gabriel had been a lot of things but tired had never been one of them.

"Sam?" Gabriel asked again because Sam had forgotten to answer, "You don't have to do this if you're-"

"No, I need to do this. I want to. I just I wish... that things were different." Sam opened the bottle of water Gabriel had given him. Of course Gabriel would know exactly what to bring a hungover Winchester, he'd had twenty odd years of practice at it. "I need to do this." Sam repeated. "I'll go meet with the mortician, wake Dean up. We need to do this, he's our family. It shouldn't be left up to anyone but family."

Gabriel pulled his lips into a thin line, but didn't say anything further. Sam hated him for it.

* * *

There was a bruise.

Purple and mottled and roughly the size of Sam's middle, ring and pinkie fingers. Dean didn't say anything about it. Sam was starting to think that maybe last night hadn't happened, with the way that Gabriel was acting the same, didn't look at Sam like he did the night before, didn't use the same voice as he did when Sam's hand was on him.

That voice that was almost like they were lovers.

But Dean wore the proof on his cheek, even if he refused to acknowledge it. It was just another of Sam's tantrums and everyone was deciding to refuse to give it any attention. Sam waited in the passenger's side of the Impala while Dean and Castiel said goodbye in front of the hotel, their postures guarded, aware that everyone could see them.

They were disagreeing. Castiel kept looking over at the Impala to where Sam sat, but Dean was acting like his head could only turn in the opposite direction. Castiel hadn't had the sort of practice Dean and Gabriel had.

They were silent as they drove to the funeral home where John's body had been transported. Sam had a hangover, Dean had a bruise and none of it seemed to matter because John was cold and dead somewhere. It wasn't an abstract idea anymore, it was the truth. Sam was going to see his father for the last time and it was going to be a still, lifeless body.

"What happened?" Sam finally asked. Dean glanced over at him. "With Dad? Like, what was he like before the show... and stuff. Did he... did he say anything?"

Dean rubbed his nose, turning his eyes back to the road and squeezing the steering wheel.

"No. Not that I actually know of. He was a few doors down from my room, Gabriel was between us. And, we were supposed to hit the road, you know? And Dad wasn't answering his phone. Wouldn't wake up, we figured, but you know how he is after a show. Or how he...was..." Dean rubbed his nose again, roughly, like that would make it impossible to cry. "So after a couple of hours, Gabriel got worried and started bugging hotel management to let him in the room. They wouldn't, see, cause there was still like eight hours till check out and all this privacy crap.

"He ended up giving some poor maid three hundred dollars and then they found him. I was still in my room, I didn't know how worried everyone else was, they must have been trying to play it cool, figured he drank too much and didn't want to bother us—me.

"Then Gabriel came and got me a little while before the ambulance showed and he told me. The fucked up thing, Sam? I wasn't surprised. I mean, I was devastated. He's our Dad. We ain't got much family anymore. But... I wasn't surprised."

"What do they think happened?"

"You know Dad. It's pretty obvious."

"So... Mom died of an overdose and Dad died of alcohol poisoning." Sam said hollowly, Dean made a snort sound that could have been a laugh if it was actually funny. "And us? We'll probably be the death of each other."

Dean laughed at that, a real laugh, but it was short and quickly covered up once they remembered what they were doing and where they were going. Once they remembered that their father, cold and alone someplace, surrounded by strangers. Kinda like he had been in life, but quieter now, and more permanent.

"Glad you're here, Sammy." Dean said finally. "Don't know that I could do this alone."

"Sure you could. You've got Cas and Gabriel. I'm not much good to this family. You could've done this alone."

"Probably. But I didn't want to." Dean said, letting his focus turn back to the road. "I'm glad you came back."

* * *

The morgue wasn't much different from the hotel, actually.

It was the same, stifling silence in the hallways, the same tacky stucco wallpaper and the plush carpets that swallowed the sounds of their footsteps. The difference was, there weren't any neighbors that would wake in this place, this weird purgatory of grief driven politeness and respectful silence.

They saw the body first; and it was just as Sam had expected and yet noting like he had imagined. John looked younger, somehow, than Sam remembered. Fewer parenthesis lines framing his mouth, but more silver flecked in his hair and beard. He looked just like his father, but paler and more final.

He didn't smell the same, not like whiskey and cigars and leather. He smelled like formaldehyde and lemon freshener.

Dean had a harder time with it, glancing down at John quickly then anywhere else, but Sam couldn't tear his eyes away. With Dean, the shoe would drop later. It'd come up again, in a month, in a year, in a bout of unjustified anger or inappropriate alcoholism. Dean was so Hell bent on being their father, he'd carry that moment with him for the rest of his life.

But Sam?

Sam wondered what kind of man he was. He looked at his father, the pariah and the messiah in a single, fleeting human body and felt... hollow. A penny of loss down a well of numbness. He wasn't angry anymore, how could he be? He'd spent his whole life hating his father for loving the stage and the song more than his flesh and blood. He spent the past ten years imagining meeting John again, finally popping the huge ugly infection of hate that had been festering for ten years, just under the surface of his skin.

But his father seemed so small, now. So insignificant.

And Sam didn't feel any of it at all.

* * *

"So," the mortician said, his voice a professionally practiced low tone. Clear and concise but still so, very sorry for their loss. "I have been told by the will executor that you wanted the body to be transported and buried in Lawrence, Kansas. He's already given the approval and-"

"Wait, there was a will?" Sam interrupted.

"Yes." the mortician said, sifting through the stack of papers on his desk. "It was written about six years ago, the executor of the will was a 'Mister Gabriel Novak.'"

Sam's spine went rigid at the mention of Gabriel's name, at this time above all the others, but Dean sighed and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

"All right, and he made the arrangements already?" Sam continued.

"He waived his right to make the judgement on John's behalf. It's up to you boys how you'll want to remember him. Now, perhaps the cemetery where a loved one is already buried would be a place to start."

"Mom wasn't buried, she was cremated." Dean said, half to Sam and half to the intruder on the uncomfortable heavy moment. "I don't know where his mom was buried."

"If John was baptized, you'll have those records. That would be an appropriate place to lay him to rest."

And there is was again, that distinct feeling of discomfort. 'Laying' his father to 'rest.' It was the most surreal part of the whole experience. Sam didn't know what to feel about the idea of leaving his father in the ground somewhere.

Even when Sam went Stanford, he'd felt his father and his brother around him, in the air and on the road, like a dream or a cloud that could never be pinned down or stuck. He could run from it, from them, and everything they stood for, but he could never _leave_ them.

But the idea of leaving John behind-

"Ok." Dean said suddenly, his voice thick and gross. Like mucus and misery inside his mouth. "Yeah that sounds... appropriate, or whatever you said. I want to do that."

The mortician glanced at Sam, who gave a nod of consent.

"Well, in that case, we can talk about how you'll want to move the body. And when you'll be making those arrangements. Have you thought about what kind of coffin you'd be interested in?"

A pamphlet appeared out of nowhere, and Dean looked like he was going to be sick, so Sam took over, nodding along as he was told about all the kinds of boxes they could pack their father away in.

Sam nodded along, picked a maple wood one that seemed simple and sturdy, like John would have liked. It kind of looked like a bar top. Sam didn't know if that thought was poignant or in terrible taste. It was funny how the two bled together in the worst time.

"So, do you have any more questions?" he asked, closing his catalog with purpose. Sam shook his head, eager to be somewhere else, wishing he had somewhere else to be besides with Dean and this grief and accusation that couldn't be ignored between them.

"How'd he go?" Dean asked suddenly.

"How did your father pass?" the mortician asked. "Oh, well, he suffered a series of strokes. It looks like he had several smaller strokes before the larger, fatal, one..." He crinkled his brow at Sam and Dean's blankly stunned faces and continued, "The hospital released a report... He probably had a very bad headache, laid down to sleep it off and... and went peacefully."

Sam had to choke down his inappropriate snort. John Winchester going peacefully. There was a joke in there, somewhere. A big, cosmic joke.

"There was nothing anyone could have done..." he continued, his voice trailing off as he looked between the brothers.

Dean looked over at Sam, out of the corner of his eye. Sam didn't want Dean to see him thinking it was funny. Dean was the one who seemed to have the appropriate reactions to this thing, even if they were delayed.

"That's good." Dean said softly. The mortician raised his eyes, "Better than the alternative."

For some reason, Sam didn't think that John would agree. But Dean was the better son, the better person, the better adjusted.

So Sam nodded again.

* * *

They got back to the hotel and Dean went to his room with Cas. He looked so tired, and so pitiful with the weight of his father's death and the mark of his brother's fist on his face. Sam didn't object, even though that meant that he was on his own.

Dean was tired, emotionally drained and withdrawn. Sam didn't want to sit still, he didn't certainly didn't want to go to bed, didn't think he could close his eyes if he thought of his father doing the same and never waking up. A boring, human, old man's death. It didn't seem fitting, but Sam didn't have any idea what was appropriate, but he was sure that it wasn't him.

He lated an hour of hotel TV before he called a cab.

He was in that bar, from the night before, within thirty minutes.

* * *

"Gabriel." Sam slurred into his cell phone. On the other line, Gabriel gave a long, tired sigh. "Gabriel, I'm at... I'm at that bar. The one you sent Dean to- And some _bitch _won't give me my car keys. Fuckin- come and pick me up. She won't let me go by myself... bitch."

"Is it that one on the District?" Gabriel asked. His voice was deeper, like he had been sleeping. Sam was silent as he looked around the bar. for some clue. Gabriel sighed again. "Never mind. I'll figure it out. Try to not be an asshole while you wait for me, would you?"

"Fuck you, man."

"Yes, yes." Gabriel muttered. "Keep your panties on. I'm coming."

"You're wearing...panties."

"Yes, exactly." Gabriel said distractedly.

* * *

Gabriel's hair was creased in odd angles when he walked into the bar. Besides that, he looked the same as he did when he bid Sam and Dean goodnight at the hotel. He looked the same as he did when Sam was a teenager, waiting for Gabriel to pick his Dad up when John was too drunk to do much of anything but stare. Sam hated Gabriel so much right now.

Gabriel, with his stupid hair. _Gabriel _the stupid executor to his father's will when he had two perfectly able adult sons and one of which was even a lawyer. He still gave that to Gabriel. Fucking Gabriel got everything, and Sam and Dean were left with the leftover scraps of a life that Gabriel permitted them. Maybe Sam would feel his father's loss if he'd felt like he'd had his father in life.

Sam hadn't started out his drinking with the intention of getting furious at Gabriel. It just sort of happened, the longer he drank, the more alone he felt. The more alone he felt the more he realized how little he was feeling of his father's death. John was gone and Sam felt hollow. It was infuriating.

Gabriel didn't exactly look thrilled with Sam at the moment either.

Gabriel and the bouncer walked up to Sam, the big muscled bald bouncer guy looked unsure. "You know, normally we'd put 'em in a cab and send 'em on their way but... we wasn't sure. Considerin'."

"Yes. Thanks for holding on to him."

"Yeah, thanks for keeping me here while I waited for my handler." Sam sneered. Gabriel barely spared Sam a glance. "He always shows up. Hasn't got nothing better to do. The fucking dick."

The bouncer glanced down at Gabriel again and kept talking like Sam wasn't there.

"You gonna be alright?" He asked him.

"Yes, we'll be fine." Gabriel sighed. "Stand up, Sam. I'm not carrying you."

"Suddenly so shy about getting your hands on me?" Sam purred. Gabriel made his skin itch. Always had since Sam was a kid. Sam couldn't sit still when Gabriel was near, he wanted to rip his own skin off just to do something.

Sam tried to stand, but his leg must have fallen asleep, or maybe his bad knee gave out because he pitched forward. He was caught by the bouncer and Gabriel; the bouncer around his arm and shoulder, Gabriel's hands lower on his chest.

Maybe his arm fell asleep too, because he couldn't feel the rough impersonal hands of the bouncer, just Gabriel's small, pinpricks of heat over his pectorals.

"'m fine. 'm _fine. Lemme go. _Stop coppin' a feel, Gabriel."

Between the three of them, they got Sam's feet to work well enough to get to Gabriel's station wagon. The bouncer helped to fold him in while Gabriel settled into the driver's seat, smacking Sam's hand away as he went for the radio.

Sam tried not to pout, but the exhausted huff Gabriel let out told him he wasn't doing the best job. Gabriel. Fuck Gabriel. Sam wanted to hit him, he wanted to choke him. Gabriel was a piece of shit, spent his whole life taking energy and power from John, taking Sam's _family _away from him. How _dare _Gabriel be exhausted by _him. _But Sam knew how to get even now, knew how to make Gabriel go helpless and undignified as Sam had been his whole life under Gabriel's thumb.

Now that Sam had felt Gabriel in his hand, his thigh, his cock. Now that Sam knew the smell of him, it was easier. Sam reached over and rubbed his hand roughly into Gabriel's crotch.

"Jesus, fuck." Gabriel yelled, throwing Sam's hand off of him and glaring while alternately watching the road as he drove. "The fuck are you doing you drunken _gorilla?_"

"Take me to your room and let me fuck you." Sam murmured. He reached over again and cupped Gabriel through his jeans. "Let me make you my bitch."

Gabriel pushed Sam's hand away and gave Sam a big shove for good measure. Sam shoved him back, and the car swerved.

"Are you _fucking _psychotic?" Gabriel shrieked, righting the car again, shaking now.

"If I am, it's because you made me this way."

"Jesus... Sleep it the fuck off, Sam. Just, shut _up._"

"What did you think would happen? When you took my Dad away from us? Show after show? City after fucking city all those years in a tour bus. What did you think would happen?"

"Oh, so this is my fault? Me? Personally?"

"Like you tried so hard to do the right thing." Sam grumbled, "Like you were trying to help Dad get sober. Trying to get me and Dean into schools, help us be normal. You didn't give a single fuck and what did you think would happen?"

"Shut up about things you don't know about, Sam." Gabriel said. He had that annoying adult tone that Sam was to slap out of him. "You have no idea."

"It's my life, Gabriel. You took my life from me and now I'm... now I'm like this and it's just what you get."

"Dean's fine." Gabriel said and it took Sam a minute to figure it out. Alcohol was making him fuzzy around the edges, making time go too fast. That and the smoke from the angry fire in his belly, where he kept all the injustice in his life, were kind of hard to see though. "Your brother was the same as you. He's fine."

"What are you saying?" Sam asked. Gabriel ignored him, like when Sam was a kid and adults wouldn't listen. Damn it, that was the last fucking feeling Sam wanted to remember in his life and ten minutes in a car with Gabriel and suddenly Sam was eleven and couldn't escape it. Sam raised his voice, "What are you _saying?!" _

"I'm saying sometimes people are born fucked to Hell. Sometimes people are just freaks. Dean can trust people. Dean can fall in love. Dean can hold his goddamn liquor and not _hit _the people driving his ass home when he's tipsy. You can blame me 'cause there is something in you that is mad all the time. But I say you're just an angry, asshole, victim claiming loser. 's always someone else, isn't it, Sammy?"

"Don't call me that."

"Fine." Gabriel said, and they drove in silence, "Fine."

* * *

They got to the hotel and Gabriel left Sam to head toward the elevators, his room was only on the second floor but Sam wasn't ready to sleep yet and it was probably Gabriel's fault.

"You're just going to leave me to wander around until I wind up at my room?" Sam asked. Gabriel's shoulders dropped.

"You'll be fine." Gabriel exhaled but he didn't sound so sure.

"'m drunk." Sam mumbled, "'m drunk and I need some help. So, help me."

"You're in a mood and you just want to be nasty to someone. You've got you head in your own ass and you want to tell me about the scenery. I'm tired. I do, actually, have things to do besides what you believe."

"Yeah. Your _job. _I forgot it was your favorite excuse. Your _job_. My fuckin' life. Dick. I'll find my own way to my room. Maybe."

"Can't just _ask, _can you?" Gabriel muttered, heading toward the elevators. "Always so _demanding."_

"Don't talk like that." Sam snapped. "Don't talk about how I _always _was."

"How about we just don't talk?"

And for some reason, that made Sam even madder. For twenty seven years, that hatred had been building in his gut, churning inside him with no hopes of getting out. He'd been ignored. He'd been resented. He'd been shuffled around from place to place like a piece of luggage, not a fucking human being and Sam finally, _finally _had a chance to vent that hot air that had consumed him for so long. He didn't want to stop talking. He'd spent most of his life not talking.

The elevator announced their arrival and Sam followed Gabriel to the same cold room he always seemed to be trying to escape. Somehow it felt too small and yet as lonely and unending as the arctic when he was in there alone.

He wasn't done talking. Sam grabbed Gabriel's arm, a little surprised at how well he could do it, and dragged him into the room.

"Let go, you yeti." Gabriel barked, using his nails to cut into Sam's hand. "Off. Off. Bad moose."

"'m bigger than you Gabriel." Sam said. He didn't let go. He squeezed until Gabriel winced, but it wasn't real because Sam had never seen Gabriel make that face before. Gabriel's whole arm had never fit in Sam's hand before. "You always used to ignore me, but I'm bigger now. Isn't that weird?"

"No. It's genetics, dumb ass. Let _go." _

"_NO!" _Sam said loudly. Maybe he yelled, because Gabriel looked nervously at the thin hotel walls. Like Sam's anger was something that needed to be kept decent. Sam shook Gabriel, dug his hand in hard enough that he could almost feel the fingers on the other side. Gabriel tried to jerk his arm back at that.

"Knock it off, Sam." Gabriel whispered threateningly. "Your temper was annoying as a child. Now it's..."

Gabriel's face played off the shadows in the room, they caught on the big, ugly pores of his skin and made weird dents along his weak chin. Gabriel looked too small and vulnerable it made Sam want to hurl. _Sam _was the little one, the one always over looked. This was like a lie. He hated every little line in Gabriel's skin and the way he could feel little, weak pulses under his hand, where he was holding Gabriel hard enough to feel his blood beating beneath his skin.

Sam had spent his whole childhood with Gabriel looming over him and now he was so small and his skin was so tissue thin. It made it seem like it was all in Sam's head.

But it wasn't. Gabriel had ruined his fucking _life. _

"'m I scaring you?" Sam asked Gabriel, and his voice sounded so low and dangerous to his own ears the he shivered.

Gabriel didn't say anything, but his eyes did flick to the door, like he wanted to be anywhere else.

And that had always been the problem, hadn't it? Whenever Sam had a question, or an opinion or a feeling; John was too drunk and Gabriel was out the door, anywhere else, able to evade Sam's entire fucking childhood.

Gabriel couldn't run away now. The hot air in Sam's stomach shrilled at that knowledge. Sam dragged Gabriel the three extra feet and threw him onto the bed.

Sam hadn't thought it out. Really, didn't mean anything by it. He wanted a place where Gabriel was off his feet, unable to brush Sam off and walk away like the eighteen years of precedent before it.

But, Gabriel took stock of his prone form on the bed, with Sam menacing above him and made his own panicked conclusion, trying to roll off and away.

And Sam hadn't meant anything by it, but who the fuck was he to even think that Sam would want to do that to him? Fucking, self centered, entitled, ass-wipe Gabriel, that's who. Didn't know Sam at all, but he talked like he did.

Sam got onto the bed, grabbing Gabriel by the shoulders and forcing him back onto his back, pinning Gabriel's hips and waist with his thighs. Gabriel kicked out, his eyes wild and after a moment, Sam realized that he was saying something. Everything around Sam was numb, his ears were filled with the sort of roaring sound, like a sea shell held to his ear.

"Stop it, stop it, you can't just _do _this because you're mad. You're not allowed just because you're drunk. Off, off, _off!" _

Gabriel was reaching for the corner of the bed, trying to haul himself out from under Sam but fuck if Sam was having any of that. Gabriel's wrists were so tiny when Sam squeezed them in his fists, went so easily when Sam shoved them back onto the mattress, on either side of Gabriel's head.

"Let me go." Gabriel begged him. It was too weak of a voice, not the man that had taken Sam's shot at normal away from him. He fucking _hated _that voice, like nails on a chalkboard. "Please, let me go."

"No. NO! Fucking _look _at me. You can't... you can't _ignore _me anymore."

"Didn't mean to ignore you. Never meant to. I'm sorry. Let me _go_." Gabriel whispered.

"What did you think would _happen?_" Sam demanded. Gabriel still wasn't listening, he was trying to get away. "What did you think would happen when I was just a teenager and … and … there weren't any girls around, just, Dad's groupies and my stupid brother who was too cool for me and... and _you."_

"What do you want from me, Sam? I'm sorry that your Dad was who he was but... but..."

"But you were just doing your _job_." Sam sneered, "Your _job _was moving people around like they were puppets. Taking away all my free will. What if I had gone to a school, huh? Maybe I'd had a girlfriend or something. Not just my Dad and my brother and _you_. I grew up all distorted. Didn't have anything to think about... No body to think about like that besides..."

Gabriel looked up at him now, something pitying in his eyes. And Sam didn't like it, because it was a little _fucking _late for Gabriel to be giving a rat's ass about him now.

Sam sneered and released one of Gabriel's hands, using it to rub profanely against Gabriel's crotch. Gabriel hissed and tried to squirm away, taking his newly freed hand and scratching desperately at Sam's wrist over his most vulnerable area. But Sam was drunk, and his hands and fingers were just parts attached to him. Kind of like how the edges of his vision were blurry, so was the feeling in Sam's fingers. The only way he even knew what he was doing was by watching his hand moving in the hot 'v' between Gabriel's legs and the way Gabriel's eyes were huge and terrified.

The freed hand gave up its attempt at pulling Sam off his crotch and settled for shoving him away. Gabriel's hand fit over most of Sam's face, the sides of his fingers scratching into his mouth and Sam still didn't _feel _it. Sam didn't feel anything at all, and he wanted to, he _needed _to because Gabriel finally had to pay attention now. Eighteen years, he'd just wanted Gabriel to fucking look at him besides as a burden or a child or something to be patted on the head and ignored. It was about time Gabriel acknowledged Sam as a human but he looked weak and panicky and Sam couldn't feel any of it.

A pinkie finger slipped into the crease of his eye and Sam was snapped back to the moment. He roared and jerked his face to the side, his eye still stinging with the phantom, salt residue of Gabriel's fingertips. The taste lingered at the corners of his mouth.

"Shut _up" _Sam cried, "You filthy, pervert faggot asshole you ruined everything. Shut _up," _

It was only Sam's voice echoing in the walls back at him. Sam hauled a hand back and hit Gabriel on the side of the face, just to remind him who was in charge here. Though Sam wasn't quite sure what to do with his power, he just knew he needed more of it.

Gabriel didn't yell out, only exhaled a long, shaky breath and squeezed his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry." Sam muttered, "I'm sorry but you weren't listening."

The side of Gabriel's face was swelling and turning pink.

"Would you listen to you?" Gabriel spat. He wasn't begging anymore. His lip curled into a familiar sneer as he looked up at Sam's form. "Does this make you feel good? Are you a big strong man now that your daddy's dead and you can fuck whoever you're bigger than?"

Sam hit Gabriel on the side of the face again and Gabriel turned as far into the pillow as he could. Sam wasn't apologizing this time.

"Fuck you for bringing up my dead father. You ass. You fucking ass. You fucking took my innocence. My childhood. My family from me and I'm here, in your lap and you're calling me a rapist. You gay piece of shit. You weren't complaining when I jerked your cock last night. You're such a filthy whore, Gabriel. You're a whore 'cause you don't stand for _anything _you'll just give it up for some washed out musician on tour. Don't care who you hurt 'cause you don't have any morals. _Fucking slut. _Willing to give it up to me in a parking garage. Can't have been easy for poor, filthy, whore Gabriel to get fucked, could it have? On the road with some two-bit country star. You made Dean a sex symbol when he was fifteen. Put him in lip gloss, I fucking remember you whoring him out."

"You're mixing your analogies, Sammy-kins. Am I a whore or a pimp?"

Sam lunged into Gabriel again, his hand landing over Gabriel's chest, as his hips crashed into Gabriel's vulnerably parted thighs. Gabriel cried out at that, pain and shock in a gush of consonants and once again, Sam felt the power of his position, his size, his control run through his body like the most delicious wine. But better, because it didn't dull him, it made him stronger and faster and smarter. Sam was good at control.

He rocked his hips again and Gabriel turned his head as far as he could into the pillow to get away.

"My whole life, you wanted them. My Dad. You know it's rape if he couldn't consent. Maybe he never sucked your cock, but you dragged him on stage. Made him preform _her _song, get all naked for them so you could get a check. And he was always drunk, you wouldn't even let him drive but you put him on stage. He could barely consent. What about Dean, huh? You brainwashed him, made him think he needed you and wanted you. Unbuttoned his shirt three holes. Made him pucker up his lips because you knew what people would think, what they'd _want _when they saw that. Sick. You're a sicko. Perverted, pedophile piece of shit.

"You ever think of that? My brother's glossy lips? He was fifteen. Is that when you thought about fucking him? Dean's so eager to please, you'd just have to remind him that you paid for dinner and he'd get on his knees if he thought he owed you. You're disgusting."

Sam rocked his hips again. Then again, faster, owning Gabriel like this. Humiliating him like he had humiliated Sam. This wasn't rape, it was fair play. Finally, Gabriel made a noise, escaping from the pillow like it was locked up. It was a whimper. Pathetic.

Sam reached between his legs, ready to grab Gabriel's manhood in his hands like a toy when he felt a shape to the flesh. Gabriel was half hard.

"Are you _kidding?" _Sam choked out a surprised laugh, "You're hard right now? You're getting off on this."

Sam gabbed a handful of hair and pulled so Gabriel had to pull his head out from the pillow to look up at him, eyes glazed over like he was thinking of someplace else.

And that didn't count. Gabriel needed to take the brunt of Sam's wrath 'cause he had started it in the first place. Sam stroked Gabriel through his jeans and Gabriel whimpered again, like it hurt. But Sam knew from experience that Gabriel couldn't feel things like hurt. It was another trick.

"Dean? My brother, Dean? That who you get all hot and heavy for? That's who makes you cream yourself? You're disgusting."

"No, it wasn't Dean. Never Dean. Never like that. Please, just stop talking. Do what you need to but just stop... just stop saying things like that. I'm going to be sick."

"Whatever _I _need to do? Oh, please, Gabriel, who are you kidding?" Sam stoked Gabriel's cock again, "You're the gay one, you think I get off on this. You're so pathetic, such a slut, so desperate for it. Don't you see that you disgust me? Perving over my brother?" Gabriel shook his head again. "Or maybe... or maybe it wasn't Dean at all. Did you ever want me, Gabriel? The baby of the family? That what gets you going?"

"Please, stop."

"That's not a no."

Sam unzipped Gabriel's pants now. It was a familiar movement, he'd done it before. Gabriel had stopped trying to push him off, just laid out on the mattress and waited for it to be over. Gave up the fight before Sam even got to drag it out into a full brawl. Gabriel's cock looked weak and ineffective, jutting out from his wrinkled jeans and zip-up hoodie. There were wet tear tracks along his face, his eyes were squeezed shut.

Sam looked away from his face because it made all the blood in his body feel the bad kind of tingly, like when a bird flew into his window or when he walked past a homeless person on the street. Or like when he thought of his father, tucked away in the dark and in a box underground, where he would only get left behind.

It was distracting him from the bigger picture.

Gabriel's cock was still as disappointingly human as it was in his car. Responsive to Sam's touch as before. The sound of flesh on flesh, that dirty rubbing noises filling the spaces between the walls.

"So, how old was I when you first wanted to corner me in your motel room and molest me? Was I still carrying around that teddy bear? Still rolling up the legs on Dean's hand-me-down jeans? Tell me, Gabriel, I want to know."

"I'm going to be sick." Gabriel begged.

"_You're _going to be sick? What about me? I'm the one who was the object of someone's sexual fantasy when I was eight."

"You weren't eight." Gabriel spat out and Sam actually stopped stroking for a moment. Gabriel looked mortified that it slipped and took his hands, which had been free but limp and defeated by his sides, and covered his face. He kept wanting to do that, gyp Sam out of the full effect.

"Go on." Sam whispered. Gabriel shook his head so Sam jerked his cock, his grip intentionally too harsh and tight. "Go. On."

"You were... you were seventeen." Gabriel muttered. Sam dragged his hands away from his face but Gabriel just looked up at the ceiling instead. "It wasn't... it wasn't like that. You were just... I saw you... you'd left the window open on your motel and I was looking for Dean and I passed it and... you were..." Gabriel petered off so Sam sped up his jerking, softer now, making it good, like a reward, "Touching yourself."

"And you wanted to go in there, spread my legs and fuck me until I screamed?"

"No! No." Gabriel whined as Sam worked him faster. His legs curled in the sheets, tensing and releasing, climbing to the orgasm Gabriel was trying defiantly to escape, "You just seemed so sad and lonely and I thought—gah—I thought maybe I could make it better, we can make it better together. I didn't think of... fucking... just..." Gabriel's back was tensing, the veins in his neck popping out. Gabriel had never made a face like that before. Sam wanted to see it now. "Stop. Stop, please, don't make me-"

"You want to come, Gabriel. I already know you're a sick pervert, watching kids beat off and getting hard over it."

Gabriel came with a sob, spurting over Sam's fist with stripes that were far hotter than Sam anticipated. He'd only felt his own come before. He was surprised that Gabriel was made of the same stuff.

He shoved his fist into Gabriel's face.

"Lick it off." He demanded and, this time, without taking his eyes from Sam, Gabriel obeyed and let Sam shove his fingers into Gabriel's mouth, wipe Gabriel's come off on the insides of his cheeks, knocking the sides of his teeth. "Filthy, filthy sick pervert. It's not rape, Gabriel. I'm not even hard and you came. What's that look like to you?"

"Like you're too drunk to get it up." Gabriel said flatly, without any bite. It was worse than the sneering and the begging.

This sort of defeat that Sam had wanted all along.

He suddenly felt light headed and all the wrong kinds of tingles in his blood. He fell forward onto his stomach, half covering Gabriel's arm and shoulder.

Then Sam passed out.


	4. Chapter 4

Gabriel took steady, measured breaths. Underneath the weight of the drunken giant, there wasn't a whole lot of room for his lungs to breathe.

Sam's pungent breath was blowing into his face and his half hard cock was prodding Gabriel in the thigh as he slept. Someone walked down the hall and went into the room next to Sam's. They turned on the TV and the room was filled with the muffled sounds of sitcom studio laughter. Cars drove by on the street, a dog barked from somewhere far away and Gabriel had just been raped.

Gabriel had one talent, one magic power that set him apart from the rest. He was amazingly adept at removing a thought from his mind. He could just, choose not to think about something and his brain would find a detour around it. He could ignore it. Gabriel was really, really good at ignoring it.

And so, he didn't think about how his knees were weak. He didn't think about how sore his eyes were, how tender his cock was, having been stripped so rough and dry. He just cut along the dotted line. Amputated that part of his brain for the time being.

Sam's eyelids started to flutter and Gabriel figured this was as good a chance as any. Gingerly, he began to ease his weight from Sam's clingy spider limbs. It took a few tries, as Sam was very heavy and once Gabriel had made any progress with the arms, the legs and the hips would latch on like a sloth to a tree.

Gabriel stood, finally, tucking his raw cock back into his pants with a wince.

He glanced back over at Sam before he left.

He didn't look like a kid anymore. Gabriel wouldn't have recognized him; all sprawled out and undignified, sleeping a gross, selfish slumber.

Gabriel pitied him all the same.

* * *

Gabriel had never really fit in.

He realized that he was an atheist when he was seven years old. His older brother, Michael, was leading a youth church service and Gabriel was in his group.

Michael was sixteen and beautiful, even Gabriel could admit that. He knew, for a fact, that Michael had never picked up his dirty underwear in his life and wiped his tacky orange Cheetos dust fingers on the sofa when he watched TV, but he could admit that, to the outside world, Michael was beautiful. He was tall and strong, captain of the lacrosse and the soccer teams, volunteered with the church on the weekends and worked part time at the grocery store during the week. Everyone knew that the Novaks had a dead-beat dad and people turned into putty when Michael smiled at them and said 'sir' or 'm'am" just as Tennessee southern and polite as you please.

Everyone loved Michael. Michael loved everyone. And, to avoid being accused of playing favorites, Michael pretended to not be his brother in the church youth group. Michael pretended Gabriel was just another kid, and when no one would play with him and when he sat alone to eat lunch, well, Michael just pretended he didn't see. His big brother was very fair like that.

It was the end of the day and Michael sat everyone in a group to ask them what they would say to God if they met him. Everyone sat and thought very hard about what they'd want to say to their heavenly father but Gabriel panicked because he suddenly realized that he was going to have to lie.

Whatever that thing was, inside of Michael, burning so bright and so trustingly full of faith... Gabriel didn't have it. Maybe he'd never had it. Michael said that God's love came from within, it was a fire in your soul that took you above them, above everything. Michael said that God's love was everything, and existed in everyone.

But Gabriel knew for certain that there wasn't anything inside him besides him. No heavenly love, no divine purpose. Just plain old Gabriel. But he couldn't just _say _that. Not with everyone looking.

It was the biggest lie Gabriel had ever told and he had been seven.

Gabriel's childhood hadn't been anything really worth waxing sentimental over. As the youngest of four, he spent most of his younger years following the group, tripping over jeans that had to be rolled up twice at the ankle and shouting, 'Hey, wait up. Wait for me.'

His brothers weren't the worst assholes. Sometimes they did.

School wasn't much different than church group. The Novaks were the poor kids in school, everyone knew that. Gabriel got the worst of it, he reckoned, with four brothers worth of hand-me-downs and goodwill bargains to make up the difference. Gabriel became accustomed to never having anything that fit properly until he was at least twenty.

No one picked on him, not really. It probably wouldn't have been very satisfying if they did. Gabriel was runty and poor. No one felt like they needed to take him down a peg.

When Gabriel was eleven he came out of the closet to his family, to which everyone responded with; "Yeah, we kind of figured."

It was the one interesting thing Gabriel had in all the din of four teenage boys with a single working mom; the one thing that made him special in his brother's clothes with his brother's toys and them talking over his head. That was the one thing that Gabriel had for himself and everyone already knew and had gotten over it. It could have been worse. There were certainly people who'd had it worse but Gabriel still felt a little something break inside him a the fact that no one seemed to care. They cared when Luc was arrested with all those drugs. They cared when Raphael wrecked the family car. They cared when Michael finished community college. But Gabriel was gay and nobody really even noticed.

But at least he could pretend that he felt victimized in church where a small but vocal minority of the congregation had many opinions on the appropriate places a man could rest his dick. His mom sighed and shrugged, saying he didn't have to go if he didn't want to. So, on Sundays, when the other Novaks would pile into the car and head to church, Gabriel got to watch cartoons without anyone telling him they were stupid and eat PopTarts without having a big brother swoop in and take his second one.

Middle school was rough, but only because he was openly gay and boys made a thing out of it in the locker rooms during gym. So Gabriel changed in the bathroom stalls and ignored the cat calls. Just like his brother, coach didn't believe in playing favorites to the fairy so he pretended he didn't notice when boys would grab their cocks and ask Gabriel if he wanted a taste. 'Hey, fag boy, I'll let you suck my dick if you ask nice.' Gabriel pretended he didn't notice either.

No one laid a finger on him, though, even after all the taunting and the staring. Gabriel supposed that three big brothers protected him from most violent backlash. Gabriel liked to think he'd be able to hold his own if it did come to it; he learned everything he knew from his second oldest brother, Luc, and Luc fought dirty but he always won.

But the name of the game in adolescence is keeping your head down, so Gabriel did. By high school, he discovered weed and the burn-out kids who were almost always game to try anything once. He kissed girls, he kissed boys, he gave his first blow-job in the backseat of Zeke's car parked behind the pizza place where Zeke was a delivery driver.

He and his friend both smoked a bowl and Ezekiel raised his hips off the car seat and raised an eyebrow. Gabriel didn't have anything better to do that night and he certainly wasn't waiting for some big strong man to come and save him from his life in high school. Even at fifteen, Gabriel figured that fairytale love probably wasn't for him.

Zeke and Anna and all his friends had crushes and boyfriends and girlfriends and all these _feelings _inside of them that took them above, over everything. A fire inside of them, this sort of all or nothing _faith _inside their souls.

But Gabriel knew that it was just him inside there. No divine purpose, no other person that he might complete. He was just Gabriel.

But he was horny. And stoned. And in this light, he couldn't even see how bad Zeke's acne was or recognize Anna's bobby pins in the seat cushions where he rested his knees as he went down on him.

Zeke ran his hands through Gabriel's hair. He stroked his thumb along his chin, over his lip, down his neck. It was kind of like making love, except Zeke kept saying 'holy fuck' and ended by asking Gabriel not to tell Anna.

Gabriel really didn't care.

It was probably one of those things; more proof that he was a broken person, missing something fundamental inside of him that was supposed to make him feel something when Zeke took Anna to prom. When Anna got pregnant. When they had babies and fell in love and bought a house and got a dog. There was supposed to be something there. Something that wanted that for himself. Love was supposed to make him better, make him want more.

He graduated high school, barely. He was stoned at graduation, and he thought you could tell by the way he looked in the picture on his mother's mantel. Anna and Zeke were falling over each other, Anna's long red hair like some sort of beacon in the sea of black gowns. Zeke had gotten too excited about the part where he would get to throw his hat and so he was already bareheaded, both arms around Anna's waist as she jokingly tried to untangle them. She was mid laugh as the camera clicked. She was very beautiful, Gabriel was as gay as Liberace, but even he had never wondered why Zeke had always been so in love with her. He was so hopeful and she was so teary, hugging Gabriel and crying and forcing him to promise that they were still going to always be friends.

But Gabriel didn't care. And it was, actually, pretty fucked up. Gabriel couldn't fall in love, that much was clear. Gabriel couldn't have friends, either. Maybe some sort of divine punishment; making him live a life of rotting mediocrity. His penance for lying when he was seven years old and not telling anyone that he was born wrong. They had accepted everything from him, all the way down to his little gay self but he knew they'd be horrified to learn that he missed out on that fire of God's love in his heart.

Gabriel was on his own.

And he did, wish, with aggressive fervor that he could believe in God. Faith looked so easy and infinitely rewarding. Who wouldn't want to believe that someone loved them unconditionally? Who wouldn't want to know that there was someone, somewhere, who knew every thought and still had a plan? It seemed nice, to them it seemed easy. 'Giving themselves to Jesus' it was the simplest request anyone could ask. But things that were easy for everyone else was almost always impossible for Gabriel to manage.

He got over it. There wasn't much of an alternative anyway.

Gabriel was no good at school when Anna wasn't around to copy off of. She went to Smith and Zeke got a solid job at an iron shop in Knoxville. They were still going steady. Anna said that Zeke might be 'the one' in one of those postcards she sent. She did that, for a while at least. Gabriel never responded.

Gabriel hung around his mother's house. She had a hacking cough, earned from a lifetime of cigarettes smoked in the diners and bars where she worked before anyone told her they'd ruin her life. Gabriel made her hot tea and watched her shows with her on her days off. She didn't ask him to move out and spared him the judgmental grumbles of three older brothers who thought it was about time he got a real damn job. Honestly, he didn't think she wanted him to leave. Their tiny, cracker box duplex was so clean and quiet now that her rambunctious boys were off being men somewhere. Gabriel thought it was much nicer but the quiet made her anxious.

He got a job working twice a week at the record store. He ended up spending his entire paycheck on eight tracks and records, devoting his shift browsing the aisles and avoiding eye contact with customers, lest they make him actually work. The only reason that Gabriel hadn't been fired thus far was that the perpetually high owner liked to hover over Gabriel's shoulder at closing and mutter filthy things into his ear.

"If a woman wore jeans that tight," Balthazar drawled, british and smoke husky voice sounding so exotic that Gabriel's heart raced. He stood behind the counter, adding up the till and watching Gabriel sweep between dirty blonde lashes. Balthazar had always leered, before. But Gabriel had pretended he didn't notice. "If a woman wore those... why, they'd be tarring and feathering me for sexual harassment."

"You haven't said anything." Gabriel said, holding the broom and looking over his shoulder at Balthazar. It was a good feeling, like hot water being spilled down his veins. It felt like power. It felt like being special. Maybe not a fire, but certainly a flicker of a spark in his gut.

He let Balthazar look his fill, this time unashamed.

"Oh, but the thoughts." Balthazar murmured, "A man could go to jail for thoughts like that."

Gabriel blinked. Balthazar licked his lips and went back to the till.

Balthazar got bolder as Gabriel didn't spurn his attentions, "You make a man want to bend you over," Balthazar would murmur, palming himself behind the counter, "You make a man want to get on his knees."

Gabriel was the first to touch, break that electric fence line that Balthazar had placed there for his own protection. He came up behind Gabriel, leaned in to murmur something about how he wanted to hold Gabriel's ass in his hands when Gabriel leaned into him, let his back mould to Balthazar's chest, let his ass press into Balthazar's crotch.

"Jesus fuck," Balthazar murmured before turning Gabriel and pressing him against the shelves, holding him in place as he kissed the ever loving fuck out of him. Gabriel groaned, spread his legs and let Balthazar fuck against him, fast and shallow and greedy, his hand cupping the back of Gabriel's head, keeping him close.

Gabriel got fucked for the first time that weekend, in Balthazar's apartment, quiet so the neighbors wouldn't hear. The air smelt stale and Balthazar's hands were sweating. The whole time Gabriel laid on his back, he watched Balthazar. It was kind of beautiful, a whole gauntlet of feelings that Gabriel was supposed to be having.

Balthazar kept murmuring how he couldn't believe it was happening, how he'd wanted it for so long. Balthazar touched his face, sucked his lip, slid his fingers into him, so slowly, so, frustratingly, slowly. Balthazar called him beautiful. Balthazar said he could fall for him.

And Gabriel didn't feel any of it at all. He still got off, though.

It actually went on for a while. Him and Balthazar. Gabriel hadn't really meant anything by it. First it was just groping in the back room a few times a week. Then sex. Then all that stuff right before and right after the sex started to sort of look like something. Like a really good friendship. Like love, maybe, if Gabriel was even capable of that.

They started getting stoned before. And they started getting pizza after. Balthazar would talk. Sometimes it was about nothing. Work stuff. Boring stuff. Stuff they might talk about even if Gabriel hadn't had his face in Balthazar's crotch or even if Balthazar hadn't rolled over on his stomach and pushed his ass up, offering.

Sometimes Balthazar would talk about where he grew up. He'd talk about his French father and he'd talk about summers in the countryside. He had more interesting things to talk about than Gabriel did, but he always wanted to listen to what he had to say anyway. It was baffling. But kind of nice. Being doted on, being held and treasured. Being someone besides the littlest one in the ill fitting clothes, calling for his brothers to wait up.

After a couple of months, Balthazar said he loved him. Gabriel said it back, because maybe he did. How was Gabriel supposed to know what that would feel like? He already knew he was missing something; didn't have that fire inside him. God didn't love him, or maybe he didn't love God, so he knew he couldn't love Balthazar like he was supposed to. He obviously didn't love Balthazar as much as Balthazar loved him.

But how the Hell was he supposed to know what to wait for, if he was going to wait for anything at all? It all looked right.

His mother loved Balthazar, almost as much as he loved her. His parents were still in Europe and so he fawned all over her and her tea cozies and her soap operas. For her birthday he managed to get her tickets to see the Mary and John Winchester when they came into Nashville. His mother had loved the Campbells, the nice, clean family band from Gabriel's childhood. They were all so very blonde and Christian, there were entire records they couldn't play anymore because of the deep wear on the tracks. Her favorite song had always been "Angels Watching Over You and I." It was thoughtful for Balthazar to remember.

Gabriel had never been a passionate individual. In fact, probably his most defining characteristic was his complete distaste for just about everything. He hated working. He hated being bored. He thought most movies were stupid but had never finished a book in his life. Gabriel sort of tumbled through life, sticking his nose up at all the things his brothers excelled at, just to have them move out and move and realize there wasn't much else left. Even in this, he was left with whatever his brothers didn't use up first. Besides their mother, he didn't _love _anything the way they did.

But he did like music.

And so Balthazar took them to the show, disappearing for a few minutes with a wink. When he came back he led Gabriel's mother to the backstage to meet the band. It was thoughtful and kind and so, very appropriate. He looked at Gabriel over his mother's head and there was something there. Something beautiful and bright, faithful and trusting.

In that moment, Balthazar was giving Gabriel something. Everything. It was ferocious and relentless. It was love, the kind of love people had in movies and books. It was the kind of love that people went to war for, the kind of love that everyone else was capable of, burning inside him.

And Gabriel realized, once again, that he was going to have to lie. His whole life with Balthazar. Pretend he had something inside of himself to offer, because Balthazar was just handing him everything on a platter and Gabriel felt none of it at all.

He slipped away as they waited in the hallway by the food table, hoping for Mary or John to walk by. Preferably at the same time. Gabriel's mother always liked the way they looked together. Him so tall and dark while she was so small and light. Like a couple from a fairy tale. It always bummed him out that she said things like that. His Dad was no prince and it seemed to be the only thing she wanted for herself. Gabriel pretended he needed to pee and left them there.

There was a tall black man who seemed to know what he was doing. He barked orders at a man not much older than Gabriel and already too drunk to work. Gabriel saw an opportunity.

"Ought to fucking fire you. It's ten at night and you're already plastered. Where the fuck did your incompetent ass leave the patch chord?"

The drunk man mumbled something indignantly and the older guy grunted. Shaking his head and listing a thousand insults under his breath. "Would fire you if anyone else was stupid enough to want your job."

"I do." Gabriel interrupted. They both looked over at him. "I'll take his job. I can find a patch chord."

"They go on in forty minutes."

"I can do it."

"What's your name, kid?"

"Gabriel."

"You ain't gonna magically produce a chord in forty minutes, Gabriel."

"Yes I can. I can do it."

"Fine. Name's Rufus. Find me when you get the chord."

"And then you'll give me the job?"

"Sure, kid. Why the fuck not." he grumbled doubtfully, turning away and shaking his head. Rufus headed back toward the stage and Gabriel made a mad dash for Balthazar's car. The music store owner had to have a cable, somewhere. Gabriel returned, sweaty and messy from literally climbing into the trunk of a Pinto but he held the chord tightly in his fist like a trophy.

Rufus laughed and called him a crazy little fucker.

Gabriel took it, and he took the job too.

His mother cried but didn't ask him to stay. She packed him a lunch to take on the road and told him to call from wherever they stopped for the night. He almost cried too, when she grabbed him around the middle. He had always been her soft boy. The sweet one. The one that hung around instead of jumping from the nest at the first go. He was her last boy. She was his only mom. He didn't love much in this world, but Gabriel had really loved her.

Balthazar was sweet. Not mad at all, which he probably should have been.

They had dinner and sex the night before he left, and they had managed to go the whole time without talking about it; not admitting the truth that the one thing Balthazar wanted from him, Gabriel would never be able to give.

Balthazar pulled Gabriel into his chest, murmuring, "You could really break a man's heart."

* * *

Gabriel didn't pass anyone in the halls, to his massive relief, sure that he'd look terrified or ruined or broken. Sure, he had the magic ability to just remove giant chunks of horrible from his brain but there hadn't even been time to heal over it yet. It was just a gaping hole now. It would get better. Fade with time.

He got to his own room and thought about showering. Washing it all off of him, Sam's stupid drunken breaths. His stupid weight. His stupid words which had been worse than anything else. Gabriel took a bottle of whiskey from the mini bar. For once, ever, Dean could pick up the slack and pay the stupid, impossible mark-up. After all these years of Gabriel cracking the whip over everyone's head about pinching pennies and saving the band's money... well, tonight wouldn't matter so much in the long run.

Oh, Dean. That made it harder.

Whiskey first, shower later. Whiskey first, letter second. Because Gabriel could forget a lot of things but not if he kept hearing them. Not if he kept seeing them. Because, and the fucked up part was, there was something to the things Sam said, some truth in there that Gabriel had only heard inside his own head. It was like a razor to know that Sam had seen through it all along.

_Dear Dean,_ he started on hotel stationary, too white and clean with a little Hilton logo at the bottom. His hand shook, so he drank a little more whiskey. It was nice. The hot burn of it in the back of his throat. It was nice to feel something.

_Dean,_ he tried again.

_I have been privileged to work with you for all these years. I've seen you grow up and your father was so proud of you. I'm so proud. _

Gabriel had to pause again and take a breath. It was harder than he thought. It was harder than he had ever expected it to be.

_You're a good man, now. And I think it's time for you to seek other management while I..._

Gabriel crossed it out. Too sappy. Too sentimental. Too hard to think of a life doing something else. To be honest, he didn't know if he had anything else.

Another shot of whiskey. Another thought that he cut along the dotted line and just removed from his memory. He had to remind himself, that he was good at that. That might have been the only thing he was ever actually good at.

_Dean,_

_While I have been honored to work with you and your father, I'm afraid I must ask you to find other representation. I think you will do well, no matter who you work with. I'm afraid I can't stay on for the funeral, but you and your brother will manage. _

_Good luck, Deano. You were always great. _

_Gabriel Novak._


End file.
